Osama Madlom

Photographer & Filmmaker | Nullius in verba | and YouTube @omadlom

[Osama Madlom @OMadlom]

Beautiful work

[Josselin @andrejosselin]

new ones with sarah posch

[Osama Madlom @OMadlom]

Absolutely love this

[gokhan @ryan2616]

#blackandwhite

[Osama Madlom @OMadlom]

I remember watching this as a kid…it gave me the creeps, but in a good way, it looked like a pretty cool film

[cinesthetic. @TheCinesthetic]

LOGAN’S RUN was released 50 years ago today.

The film won a Special Academy Award for its groundbreaking visual effects, becoming one of the first major sci-fi movies to use computer-generated imagery in a significant way.

[Osama Madlom @OMadlom]

I’d say Zimmer’s music makes up 50% of the appeal of this film. Peerless.

[cinesthetic. @TheCinesthetic]

The INTERSTELLAR teaser remains one of the greatest movie trailers ever made.

[Osama Madlom @OMadlom]

Omg. Absolutely love this

[Osama Madlom @OMadlom]

Incredible work

[cinesthetic. @TheCinesthetic]

ALIEN was released 47 years ago today.

Ripley was originally written as a man. Ridley Scott and Fox decided late in pre-production to cast a woman instead, and Sigourney Weaver became one of the final major actors hired before filming began.

[Yanis Varoufakis @yanisvaroufakis]

Every British PM’s nightmare

With Keir Starmer expected to fall on his sword shortly, here is my take on the conundrum facing Andy Burnham, indeed any and every British PM.

The true nature of Britain’s ‘special relationship’ with the United States has far more to do with American financiers’ willingness to keep borrowing to purchase British government debt than with history, culture or Britain’s defence needs. This is the burden under which every UK Prime Minister must labour.

Mike Tyson famously said, “Everyone has a plan until they get hit”. The same could be said of prospective British prime ministers, especially after Liz Truss's spectacular defenestration. They all have a plan until the guilt market hits them. Andy Burnham, Nigel Farage, my friend Zack Polanski will have to face this, if they ever move into 10 Downing Street. I think they know it. But I doubt whether they appreciate the true magnitude or nature of their predicament.

Conventional wisdom has it that the bond market comprises people looking to invest their savings in a government's debt. They seek the right balance between a higher interest rate and the increased risk this implies. For example, higher bond yields may signal that the market expects future inflation to reduce the value of the fixed interest payments that their bonds will yield. Worse still, it may foreshadow a risk of government default, as occurred in Argentina and Greece.

That’s more or less what first year economics and finance students are taught. And it’s all true. Except that, in the case of the United Kingdom, this story misses the most fascinating and worrying aspect of its government bond or gilt market: The British government’s ability to refinance its public debt of almost 3 trillion pounds does not depend on savers choosing to invest in gilts. In fact, the British government’s ability to sell gilts hinges heavily on the willingness of numerous US-based financial institutions to borrow substantial sums of dollars to purchase British gilts, which they then use as collateral to borrow for their own purposes within the US.

And there’s the rub. There is a world of difference between needing to borrow from savers and from relying on speculators who borrow themselves to lend you. Savers who lend to you focus on your long-term ability to repay them. They may tolerate your desire to make infrastructural investments that could increase your debt in the short term, in return for future profits that will help you repay them when their bonds expire. However, speculators who borrow in order to lend are a different beast entirely. They are much jumpier and prone to margin calls: situations where, if the bonds they purchased from you begin to lose value, fearing they will not be able to repay their own creditors, they dump your bonds thus turning their decline into a crash.

The question arises: Why are British bonds, or gilts, so much more reliant on American speculators borrowing money to buy them than German bunds, Japanese bonds, Italian bonds or Greek bonds? Why does every British government rely so heavily on American leveraged capital inflows?

It all started in the 1950s when the City of London discovered how to avoid following the British Empire down the road to oblivion. The trick was to carve out a niche for the City within the emerging dollar empire, which was institutionalised within the Bretton Woods system. American financiers faced rigid capital controls within that system, but the City of London was able to alleviate these due to three invaluable features.

First, London’s trading expertise and legal system offered American financiers efficiency with immunity from all sort of interventions, including democratic accountability. Secondly, Britain’s network of offshore jurisdictions offered fabulous tax-minimisation opportunities. And, thirdly, London quickly became the holding depository of a torrent of petrodollars and eurodollars, not to mention the shadowy dollars created outside the United States by foreign bankers.

Thus, the Great British paradox: while the UK's real economy was in decline, the City of London was flourishing. When the Bretton Woods system collapsed in the 1970s, American financiers discovered another use for the City: they borrowed dollars in the US short-term to buy long-term UK government gilts, which they then sold quickly to repay their loans. They would then repeat this process again and again to profit handsomely. This is how the British government became reliant on leveraged US institutions. In order to continue operating as usual, London today requires American balance sheets that are willing to expand through borrowing and use British gilts as collateral in order to maintain liquidity in the US.

Put differently, the flipside of the City’s success story is that, even though it borrows in a currency that it prints, the UK is not financially sovereign. Yes, the City occupies a strategically important position within the global dollar system but the price for this is that the UK government’s sovereignty is circumscribed by its priority to maintain the City’s central position in American finance. While this remains the priority, the occupant of 10 Downing Street is like the captain whose powers are limited to re-arranging the deck chairs on the Titanic.

Is there an alternative to this peculiar form of financial subservience to US-based leveraged financiers? Yes, but it requires a willingness to accept a falling pound and falling house prices while increasing public investment through a new investment bank that issues bonds supported by the Bank of England.

Any Prime Minister who tries to maintain Britain’s financial servitude to US capital while also investing in public goods may well put Britain on a path towards the IMF, whose sole purpose, lest we forget, is to create the political leverage that will bring about – like it did in Greece – the permanent loss of sovereignty over tax and spending policy. The question is: Do the current contenders for Britain’s top job understand this?

https://t.co/xGrWjjcudY

[Osama Madlom @OMadlom]

Studio day, Fuji XH2s + Fuji 50-140mm f2.8.
#fujifilm #fujicamera #portraitphotography

[Osama Madlom @OMadlom]

@Artzchillect Beautiful work

[Osama Madlom @OMadlom]

Stunning work

[L'uomo degli abissi @Fanrizio21]

New York 2006

Rodney Smith

[Osama Madlom @OMadlom]

Amazing scene.

[Osama Madlom @OMadlom]

@Lady_FanAccount Epic backstory. Amazing

[Osama Madlom @OMadlom]

🤣🤣🤣

[Abhishek B R @abhitwt]

pov: you visit linkedin for the first time ever:

[Osama Madlom @OMadlom]

It blows me away even more now then it did 40 years ago when I first watched it

[Michael Warburton @For_Film_Fans]

The Blue Danube sequence from

2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY (1968)

It’s worth noting that principal photography on this movie started in 1965, the same year The Beatles recorded 'Rubber Soul'. That the special effects stand up so well even now is incredible.

[Osama Madlom @OMadlom]

I recently rewatched this film for the first time in years…. and I’ve got to say…. even though it’s almost 3 hours long, it doesn’t feel it. There’s not a single wasted scene in the whole film.

[Gangster Cinema Central @GangsterCinema]

When Michael Mann finished his final cut of Heat, it was 2 hours and 45 minutes long — almost unheard of for a contemporary crime drama. When he turned it in to Warner Bros, the executives had already decided it was too long before they even saw it. Mann explains:

“In terms of length, I had a really interesting encounter with Bob Daly and Terry Semel at Warner Brothers when I made the picture. They told me afterwards they flipped a coin to decide who would have to tell me to cut 45 minutes out of the film — this was before they had even seen it.

Then we all went to the big screening at Warner Brothers, and afterwards they stood up and said, ‘Well, I guess we have a two‑hour‑and‑45‑minute movie.’”

[Osama Madlom @OMadlom]

Dalton was one of the best. Probably the best Bond.

[Timeless Films @axaxia92]

Timothy Dalton – James Bond is ahead of his time! ⚪️⚪️🔴

Not a grinning superhero, but a cold, dangerous assassin like Ian Fleming. Top-notch action, sharp eyes, and "do it for real" vibe.

This edit burns all the hiccups! Who still says Dalton is not the best Bond? 🔥

[Osama Madlom @OMadlom]

Incredible…..@elonmusk we need a cure for retinitis pigmentosa 🙏🙏🙏

[Elonogy @ElonogyX]

Elon Musk: "In the next 6 to 12 months, we’ll be doing our first implants for vision, where even if somebody is completely blind, we can write directly to the visual cortex."

"Long term, you would have very high resolution and be able to see multispectral wavelengths... you could see in infrared, ultraviolet, radar. It's like a superpower situation."

[Osama Madlom @OMadlom]

Totally agree with this! Having GF as DOP was amazing as well.

[cinesthetic. @TheCinesthetic]

Even though Rogue One (2016) is my favorite Star Wars film by a wide margin, the hallway scene is what truly elevates it.

In just a few minutes, Darth Vader stops feeling like a larger-than-life villain and becomes something far more terrifying.

[Osama Madlom @OMadlom]

🤣🤣🤣🤣

[Not Jerome Powell @alifarhat79]

Americans realizing they spent $75 billion fighting Iran, then another $300 billion rebuilding Iran, just to reopen the Strait of Hormuz that was already open before the war started

[Osama Madlom @OMadlom]

First portrait shoot taken with my Fuji GFX100ii. The detail coming off the 102MP large format sensor paired with the GF 55mm f1.7 is breathtaking. #fujifilm #portraitphotography